GE was awarded 44 contracts totaling over $46,000,000 and 44 grants totaling more than $79,000,000 from the Obama-Pelosi $757 billion dollar stimulus package. Millions of dollars in stimulus funds were used by GE in green energy projects.

Today GE announced that it was going to gut its offshore wind-power plans.

General Electric, the U.S.-based industrial giant and leading manufacturer of wind-power turbines, is scaling back efforts to expand its presence in the offshore wind power market.

The rationale: there is no meaningful offshore wind market to speak of – at least not yet. Given slower-than-expected industry growth, the offshore market may not mature as rapidly as many wind boosters once believed. In 2009, GE moved into the offshore market by acquiring Norway’s ScanWind, a developer of direct-drive turbines, based in the city of Trondheim.

GE is considering laying off about 40 employees in Norway as it scales-back its offshore operations there, according to reports in Recharge. The company has also suspended plans to construct a manufacturing facility in the United Kingdom indefinitely.

GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, the head of Barack Obama’s Economic Advisory Panel, was invited to sit with the First Lady during the president’s speech to Congress this past week. He’s been a strong supporter of the president since he took over the White House and his companies have received plenty of government funds as well.

The Solyndra-gate scandal, which the GOP realizes has the potential to shake the Obama administration to the very top, refuses to go away. Earlier today AP reported that to a republican Subpoena demanding all documents instead of just those selectively produced, "could trigger a claim of executive privilege by the Obama administration and elevate the political stakes....

......And here is where the latest joke from this president jumps the shark: "[White House chief of staff] Daley said he's tapping a former Treasury official to conduct the review." A former Treasury official... of the Obama administration?

"…Another about $115 million of the $503 million went to a company called First Wind, whose owners include the Chicago-based Madison Dearborn Partners and a member of the D.E. Shaw group. This Bloomberg article quotes President Obama's White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a congressman at the time the article was published, as saying of Madison Dearborn, "They've been not only supporters of mine, they're friends of mine." The Bloomberg article says, "Employees of Madison Dearborn have donated $77,500 to Emanuel's re-election committee since 2001, collectively emerging as the top contributor to his campaigns in his congressional career, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics." D.E. Shaw is the firm at which Mr. Obama's chief of the National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers, held a $5.2 million a year, one-day-a-week job. The Energy Department did not respond to a query from FutureOfCapitalism.com about whether Messrs. Emanuel or Summers had been involved in the decision to award the grant....

What has been revealed – to this point only partially, by the Solyndra scandal, is far more serious, not only to this administration but to the entire Democratic Party. Many of them have their hands in the corruption that was the Obama Stimulus Bill of 2009. Solyndra is but one small example of how that money was spent. The dealings that took place under the false guise of saving the economy. It is my personal understanding – and this is the talk of others in positions of some influence, that Solyndra – what Solyndra could ultimately reveal, could prove far more damaging to the entire political system…and certainly to the Democratic Party.

Note: I agree 100% with the above. As I have repeatedly posted numerous articles and links here

The review by Massachusetts utilities regulators has been bogged down by the Patrick administration’s efforts to subject the deal to more stringent environmental standards and rate negotiations — as well as behind-the-scenes pressure on Nstar to buy power from Cape Wind. The state’s motion will be hashed out in a hearing on Nov. 17.

The White House on Friday rejected House Republicans’ subpoena for all internal communications related to the $535 million Solyndra loan guarantee, instead providing 135 pages of documents that administration officials say meet the “legitimate oversight interests” of congressional investigators.

While Robertson’s Hopkins biography makes no mention of her work at Enron, federal disclosure documents show she joined the company in 2000 after working at the Treasury. Robertson, who signed some of the forms, said she lobbied on energy and tax issues.

On cue comes the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which this week issued warnings to businesses that they will face whopping fines of up to $1.1m if they blame the carbon tax for price rises.

It says it has been “directed by the Australian government to undertake a compliance and enforcement role in relation to claims made about the impact of a carbon price.”

Businesses are not even allowed to throw special carbon tax sales promotions before the tax arrives on July 1.

Deutsche Bank and a handful of other global firms pledged on Friday to get at least 25 percent of their energy from wind.

Companies including Deutsche Bank, the news service Bloombergand the medical technology firm BD announced they would sign on to a new label, WindMade, which will designate companies that usewind energy.

The idea for the new label was first announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos last year.

CHICAGO—IntercontinentalExchange Inc. told traders Friday that it would shut down its U.S. emissions derivatives platform, a year after acquiring its parent only to suffer sparse trading as the prospects of a federal carbon-reduction plan remain dim.

The money-losing Chicago Climate Futures Exchange venture will continue operating through the first quarter of 2012 before closing, exchange officials said in a notice. ICE will then list over-the-counter emissions contracts mirroring products listed on the platform.

Intercontinental Exchange has announced plans to launch 21 over-the-counter North American emissions contracts.

The announcement follows on the heels of news that ICE will shut its emissions derivatives trading platform, Chicago Climate Futures Exchange, by the end of Q1 2012.

The new contracts will mirror products to be lost when the futures exchange closes, the Wall Street Journal reported. New products include derivatives linked to emissions reductions plans in California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Connecticut, ICE said.

Range Fuels Inc., a cellulosic ethanol company backed by as much as $156 million in U.S. loans and grants from President George W. Bush’s administration, is being forced by the government to liquidate its only factory after failing to produce the fuel.The closely held company, which counts Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist and Sun Microsystems Inc. co-founder, as an initial investor, shuttered the factory in Soperton, Georgia, in January after not delivering on its promise to convert woodchips into ethanol, which was intended to help the U.S. become less dependent on foreign oil.Soperton’s failure comes after Solyndra LLC, a solar-panel maker that received a $535 million federal loan guarantee, filed for bankruptcy in September. The ethanol project received $46.3 million of a $76 million grant from the Energy Department and half of an $80 million loan from the Agriculture Department, according to each department.

Bluewater President Peter Mandelstam said on Monday he holds out hope that a buyer for the offshore wind division would step forward before Dec. 23, the date by which NRG must inform Delmarva if it wishes to end the contract.The contract is widely seen as Bluewater’s most valuable asset, and observers said it would be difficult to build the project without one.

After his term in office, King formed his own wind company that has received federal money (much like First Wind (which employs his son) as well as his PUC Commisioner (Kurt Adams) who got stock and a job at First Wind while he was a sitting member of the PUC.

Now who is Jay Cashman? His other company specializing in dredging just got a sweet contract cleaning up the PCB mess left by GE in the Hudson river and is gearing up to do work on the proposed offshore wind projects. (King is a big promoter of that folly).

General Electric, the nation's largest producer of wind turbines, is blaming a drop in orders on the uncertainty surrounding a wind-production tax credit.

GE’s wind sales fell 37 percent from the second quarter of 2011 to the same quarter in 2012, the company announced Friday in its second-quarter earnings report. Deirdre Latour, a spokeswoman for GE, attributed most of the decrease in sales to the tax credit's uncertain future.

A slew of smaller wind firms have announced layoffs in recent months, with most listing the wind tax credit as a driving factor.

General Electric (GE.N) has agreed to buy the aviation business of Italian aerospace company Avio for 3.3 billion euros ($4.3 billion), or 8.5 times Avio's 2012 EBITDA, the companies said on Friday.

Avio will strengthen GE's global supply chain capabilities as its engine production rates continue to rise to meet growing customer demand, GE said in a statement on Friday.

Avio, which supplies engine parts for the Eurofighter Typhoon and engine makers GE and Rolls Royce Holdings Plc (RR.L), was acquired in 2006 by Cinven in a deal that valued the company at about 2.6 billion euros.

Tax lobbyist Ken Kies was not worried. A decade earlier, he had led a fight to preserve a key loophole - known in Treasury Department shorthand as the "check the box" rule - when another Democratic president, Bill Clinton, had tried to kill it.

"I told my clients, 'Don't sweat this. This is never going to happen,'" recalled Kies, who has advised corporate giants Microsoft and General Electric on the issue.

Kies was right.

Business groups rose up against Obama's plan, arguing that it could damage U.S. businesses already threatened by the weak economy. Democrats in Congress balked, Obama dropped the idea and the loophole survived.

The story of the "check the box" loophole, which allows U.S. companies to choose for themselves how to classify their subsidiaries for tax purposes, and a companion policy known as the "look-through" rule, shows how Washington bureaucrats, lobbyists and politicians have worked together — sometimes wittingly - to save money for American corporations and deprive the federal government of billions in tax revenue each year.

What began in 1996 as an effort by the Treasury Department to simplify the U.S. tax code mistakenly ended up as a massive tax loophole for corporate America, which seized upon it and has never let go.

Besides fueling an explosion in earnings that U.S. companies keep abroad - now more than $1.8 trillion, the Commerce Department estimates, double the amount from less than a decade ago - the loophole has become a symbol of how difficult it can be to repeal a tax benefit once it becomes entrenched.

At congressional hearings last week, several lawmakers blasted Apple Inc. for using the "check the box" loophole and other international tax strategies to avoid paying what they estimated as $9 billion in potential U.S. taxes in 2012.

Fully developed, the 112,799-acre lease could generate 2,000 megawatts. John, loveThe verbiage here. Could, maybe,, perhaps. They would have done better to have bugs bunny as a spokesperson for their n efarious plan.

GE v. U.S. and the world... Let's see... Decaying nuclear fission power plants, aiding and abetting in conspiracy to commit genocide, thirty counts and rising. The #1 through #4 nuclear fission plants at Fukushima...felony murderous conduct against the people of Japan and felony reckless endangerment against five billion people. For the Fukushima genocide, first degree murder, aiding and abetting, ten thousand counts and rising. For the Offshore Windfarm fraud of taking $125 million. First class felony fraud against the good will and faith of the American people, ten counts and rising. Creating hazards and reckless endangerment to over five billion and counting citizens of earth through the wholesale on site dumping of hundreds of tons of spent radioactive fuel with a lethal toxic and destructive potential for ten thousand years and more, a minimum of five billion counts and rising. . All the National Guard and law enforcement agencies have to do is blindly follow orders to lash out against those dedicated to good health and justice. Eric 'The Holder' Holder is too busy polishing the back door knob George H.W. Bush is going to use to leave his career as #1 White House criminal.Fucking witless, the whole lot. Their names will STINK in the history books. Like a whole bucket of dead rats in the couch. You can mewl with congress, or affect a cure. You are going to be the one who saves your own house. Stop doing it at others' expense. Head of the octopus...

I love covering trials, which is one reason I've been a little sad since switching over to the Wall Street beat: Few of the bad guys in this world ever even get interviewed by the authorities, much less indicted, so trials are comically rare.

But we did have one last year, a big one, and though it was boring and jargon-laden enough on the surface that at least one juror fought sleep in its opening days, I thought it was fascinating. In a story about the Justice Department's Spring 2012 prosecution of a wide-raging municipal bond bid-rigging case, I called it the "first trial of the modern American mafia":

"Of course, you won't hear about the recent financial corruption case, United States of America v. Carollo, Goldberg and Grimm, called anything like that . . . But this just completed trial in downtown New York . . . allowed federal prosecutors to make public for the first time the astonishing inner workings of the reigning American crime syndicate, which now operates not out of Little Italy and Las Vegas, but out of Wall Street."

Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm were mid-level players who worked for GE Capital. They were involved in a wide-ranging scheme (one that also involved most of America's biggest banks, from Chase to BOA to Wachovia) to skim billions of dollars from America's cities and towns by rigging the auctions banks set up to help towns earn the highest returns on the management of municipal bond issues.

The case was over 10 years in the making and involved offenses that took place long before the 2008 crash. All three defendants were convicted in May 2012, with Goldberg ultimately getting four years and the other two getting three.

Now, they're all free. A New York federal judge last week ordered their convictions overturned in a quiet Thanksgiving-week transaction.